The history of the petunia

There is always a plant that, like Marmite, you either love or loathe, and it appears that through the
ages the petunia has been this plant. As part of the Solanaceae family, it is closely related to the tobacco, cape gooseberry, tomato, potato, chilli pepper and deadly nightshade.

In the early sixteenth century when Queen Elizabeth I reigned, Spanish explorers in South America
discovered a low growing, trail forming, white flowered scented Axillaris, which in the Tupi-Guarani language was called Petun. This roughly translated from their language to the “worthless tobacco plant.” But, because of its perceived ugliness, the explorers did not think it was worth sending samples of it back to Spain. And ironically, anyone in Britain during the fifteen hundreds believed that the petunia was a symbol of the demonic power of satanism as it was reputed to harbour anger and resentment.

Petunia x hybridia ‘Sparklers’

Fast forward about three hundred years to Eighteen Twenty Three, during the reign of King George III. It’s just after the Napoleonic Wars and the French King, Joseph Bonaparte, (Napoleon’s Brother) has sent explores back to Argentina. This time they send samples of the plant back to Spain, where botanists confirmed the Indian name for it and place it in the tobacco family. Just a few years later there are records that state in 1831 the great Scottish Explorer John (James) Tweedie was exploring the Americas, and he came across another genus of the Petunia the Violacea which is purple in colour. He too, took specimens of the plant and he sent them to the Glasgow Botanical Gardens.

Tweedie is also listed as a collector for the Edinburgh Botanical Gardens and out of the 35 genus of petunia, there is one named after him. Petunia Tweedia. Categorised as a Grandiflora the series is an example of this genus. He is an extraordinary and inspiring person and there is more about him in part two of this blog. In the late eighteen hundreds breeders, especially in England Germany, America and Japan began crossing the sample of petunias they had in search of more varied colours and larger petals. These early crossings were referred to as Petunia X Hybrida although they were not strictly hybrids.

In Nineteen Hundred a well known American Seed company noted in their sales catalogue that
double petunias only occurred in twenty to thirty percent of petunias grown from seed. Moving to Nineteen Thirty Four, a mere eighty two years ago, when King George IV reigned, the Japanese once again came to the forefront of petunia breeding, by being the first to breed the consistently double petunia. They had managed to understand and apply Mendel’s Third Law of Dominance. (In a cross between two organisms pure for any pair [pairs] of contrasting characteristics the character that appears in the F1 generation is called the dominant one).* So now you know why so many seed packets have an F1 hybrid on them.

There are also F2 type Petunias and T&M’s Petunia Rainbow is an example of these. It does not mean that it is a lesser plant, it just means that its the seeds collected and grown from a F1 parent. To read more on the differences between F1 and F2 plants I would recommend you read the info pages on the T&M website. Within the same decade, German seed companies bred Grandiflora Petunias looking for colour diversity, and in the late Nineteen Thirties the American Charles Weddle discovered the fact doubleness was a dominant gene and by crossing a true double with a suitable petunia would result in seeds that would only produce double flowers.

Queen Elizabeth II is crowned in Nineteen Fifty Three and breeders are still trying to find the perfect petunia, Firstly there is Claude Hope who releases the F1 hybrid cultivator Connache. He is instrumental in the producing of the hybridisation of the single and double Grandiflora and Multiflora strains we see today, In addition there is Fred Statt who we must thank for breeding disease and weather resistant plants. In Nineteen Eighty Three a new class of petunias called Floribunda are created. In 1995 Petunia ‘Purple Wave’ is introduced and in 1996 the Milliflora is bred.

So that’s a brief history of how the petunia emigrated from Argentina to Britain, but I was curious about the life of John (James) Tweedie so read the rest of my history of the Petunia in Part Two.

My name is Amanda and I live in Pembrokeshire with my fiancé and our garden is approximately 116 meters square. I want to share with you my love for gardening and the reasons behind it, from the good to the bad and ugly. I want to do this for my own personal pleasure. If you would like to take the journey with me then please read my blogs and share with me your gardening stories.

11 Comments

Erika
on February 19, 2019 at 2:43 am

This article is amazing! I’m doing a school project on petunias, if you see this can you explain what exactly a double petunia is? I can’t find an answer anywhere, thanks.

Hi Erika
Glad you enjoyed the article. A double flower is one which has has extra petals, giving it a full and frilly appearance. Plants are often bred this way as they look showier – although they can also occur naturally as a genetic mutation. One added benefit is that double flowers are generally sterile and therefore last longer than simple, single flowers.
Good luck with your school project
Sue

Double flowers are pretty, but if you really want to encourage bees and other pollinators single varieties are easer for them to access. Being a double means that the flower has extra petals, usually like a second layer that makes it look more fuller.

That’s an interesting question. I genuinely don’t know for certain. There seems to be a lot of controversy over who coined the term genetics. I have started to read into it further- seems like Mendle originally discovered it, but it wasn’t recognised until much later – and then there were two separate thinkers who took the idea further. Would love to know your thoughts if you have any further information on it.

Thank you for taking the time to read this article and making me think deeper on the subject of genetics.

Amanda, I am doing research on a book about Rochester, New York seedsman James Vick (1818-1882). He hybridized petunias in his green house and came up with his own called ‘Vick’s New Fringed’. I know there was no tissue culture. He used pollen from a double and brushed that on a single. That produced many double seeds.That process was a common way of creating a hybrid.
Noel Kingsbury in his book Hybrid writes that hybrizing really started after 1900 with L. H. Bailey in New York at Cornell and Luther Burbank in California.
My book focuses on Vick’s skill in selling Victorian annuals we still grow today, like the Petunia, which is an example I include.
The history of the petunia is important because readers can visualize the plant since it is so common today. Also, today supertunia is the #1 seller for annuals, at least at Proven Winners.
I enjoyed your history of petunias.

Dear Amanda – Thank you so much for your wonderful history of petunia. My father is the Charles Weddle you write about. I grew up with petunias everywhere in our small mountain town in Colorado, chosen for the fact that it had the perfect climate for breeding petunias. Claude Hope, who you also mention, was a frequent visitor to our home along with many other flower people. I found your article as I was googling to decide which petunias to put in my planters this year and was so pleased to see that even in 2016 my father is still remembered. Thank you.

Thank you so much for your kind words. I hope you didn’t mind me mentioning your fathers work, but his research into double-flowered petunias was amazing.

My childhood was spent listening to my dad, his parents, siblings, friends, neighbours and cousins discussing potato harvests, sheep dips, milk quotas and crop rotation, I haven’t a clue about farming, but growing things seems to be in our blood. Pottering about in the greenhouse or garden is the extent of my knowledge, so when I did the research for the blog I became really fascinated with the people behind the plants. After all if it wasn’t for them my world would be a less beautiful and interesting place.

Well done Amanda on the history of the Petunia, it is very interesting and look forward to the second part. I hear you had damage as well in the storm with broken glass in your greenhouse, hopefully it won`t take too much to repair it. We lost a front fence and had another one delivered today. Lets hope we don`t get too many more storms like that this year. Good luck with trying petunias this year I am sure you will have great success.